OpEd: High-speed trains are no engine of growth for Illinois

Steve Stanek is a research fellow at the Heartland Institute in Chicago.

Gov. Pat Quinn and other state and local officials insist that rail transportation can be an "economic engine," but experience indicates passenger rail transportation  especially high-speed rail  will be a woefully underpowered money machine.

Before his renomination Feb. 2, Mr. Quinn held a conference in Chicago with various local and state officials to promote passenger and freight rail service. He is especially eager for a chunk of $8 billion in federal money targeted for high-speed rail.

But nowhere in the world does high-speed rail make a profit. On only two lines  in France and Japan  does it manage to break even.

Across the nation, passenger rail projects routinely cost far more than estimated to build and run. Right now in Minnesota, for instance, there is a lot of finger-pointing over the Northstar Commuter Rail Line. Begun 12 years ago, it was expected to cost $165 million to put into operation and run from Minneapolis 80 miles northwest to St. Cloud. Trains would run on existing tracks and use readily available cars and engines to control costs.

Those estimates were a fantasy. The total cost has topped $317 million, yet the line runs only 40 miles from Minneapolis to Big Lake. That's nearly $8 million a mile, four times the original estimate of $2 million a mile. In addition to these vastly inflated costs, taxpayers are footing 80% of the operating costs.

Then there's Amtrak, established in 1971 to be a national passenger rail service. The original plan was for it to operate three years with public subsidies, after which its operating revenue would keep the system running. Amtrak has never turned a profit, instead consuming billions of taxpayer dollars.

Last October, Pew Charitable Trusts' Subsidyscope project determined that 41 of Amtrak's 44 routes lost money in 2008. The line with the highest per-passenger subsidy  the Sunset Limited between New Orleans and Los Angeles  carried almost 72,000 passengers last year. The subsidy was $462 per passenger. The California Zephyr, which runs from Chicago to San Francisco, had the second-highest per-passenger subsidy, $193, carrying nearly 353,000 passengers in 2008.

Pew determined that the average subsidy across the entire Amtrak system in 2008 was $32 a passenger.

Even if passenger rail could be built on time and within budget, a March 2009 U.S. Government Accountability Office report concluded high-speed passenger rail projects would have "little impact on the congestion, environmental, energy and other issues that face the U.S. transportation system."

Draining billions of dollars from private businesses and individuals to subsidize passenger rail projects that almost never come close to paying for themselves and will have "little impact" on the nation's transportation system is no way to speed the engine of economic growth. In fact, it only helps grind the engine to a halt.

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